The Critical Analysis Reporting Environment (CARE) is a data analysis software package. CARE uses analytical and statistical techniques to generate information directly from the data. Specifically, it can be used to analyze collision, exposure, vehicle, driver/population, and road infrastructure data to identify safety issues in a road network. Also, it has applications to formulate emphasis areas, objectives, and strategies to address the identified causal and contributing factors. Furthermore, it has applicability in prioritizing specific locations for treatments targeted to the emphasis area and estimating the number of collisions that could be reduced for a given emphasis area. The software includes the following functions.

• Statistical Generation: Retrieves summary information for the entire dataset or any subset.
• Data Analysis: Produces charts and graphical displays for any or all variables in the dataset.
• Information Mining Capability: Automatically generates information from the data without users having to specify queries. Any or all can be processed simultaneously, and the results can be ordered according to the most significant first indicating areas where countermeasures will provide maximum gain.
• Non-Categorical Variables: Allows the use of non-categorical values as opposed to being restricted to a known list of discrete values or ranges when creating a CARE dataset.
• Narrative Data Searching: Uses a word or phrase to create the filter from the narrative.
• Hotspot Determination: Identifies a location with a high crash history.
• Report Generation: Generates reports ranging from overall summaries to detailed information on a per-crash basis.
• Collision Diagram Generation: Draws collision diagrams for any location specified by CARE.
• GIS Integration: ESRI/ArcGIS has been integrated into CARE enabling analysis results from CARE to be mapped using ArcView.
• Open Road: Users can select a location on a mile-posted route and view images and data from crashes along that route.